It seems that more than one person might have secretly recorded audio of President Donald Trump. According to The Daily Beast, former presidential assistant Omarosa Manigault-Newman secretly recorded Trump and other staffers in the White House, and she reportedly leveraged those tapes to sell her forthcoming book, UNHINGED.
Bustle has reached out to the White House for comment.
The so-called "Omarosa tapes" mark the second time that clandestine Trump recordings have surfaced in recent weeks. Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, also reportedly recorded the president during conversations.
According to people who listened to Omarosa's recordings — who are not named in the report — most of what she has on tape is described in The Daily Beast as "anodyne, everyday chatter," though Trump's voice is reportedly audible at times. Whether these recordings will be of any immediate consequence is not immediately clear.
When asked about the alleged recordings, Omarosa's publisher, Simon & Schuster, denied to confirm or deny their existence in a statement given to The Daily Beast. "Without commenting on the specific contents of UNHINGED, we are confident that Omarosa Manigault Newman can substantiate her highly-anticipated account of life inside the Trump White House," a spokesperson said.
Omarosa, for her part, formerly starred on The Apprentice, the reality television show formerly produced by Trump. She was hired to work on the Trump campaign as the Director of African-American Outreach. After the election, she worked on the presidential transition team, then at the White House, formally as the "Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison." She gained notoriety after her dramatic exit, both from the position and the premises.
Omarosa was widely considered to be relatively close to the president before her departure from the White House. That narrative, however, has changed.
In an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother earlier this year, Omarosa publicly reflected on her time working in Washington. "It's so bad," she said of her time there.
“I felt like it was a call to duty,” she said through tears, according to The Washington Post. "I felt like I was serving my country, not serving him . . . It was always about the country. Like, I was haunted by tweets every single day, like what is he going to tweet next?"
She also expressed frustration about accessing the president, alleging that "all the people around him attacked me. It was like keep her away, don’t give her access, don’t let her talk to him."
According to Politico, Chief of Staff John Kelly fired Omarosa for abusing the White House car service. After she was fired, however, Omarosa attempted to speak to Trump personally in order to appeal her dismissal. According to reports, she went so far as to attempt entering the presidential residence, after which she was physically escorted from the property.
Trump has not yet publicly commented on Wednesday's reports about Omarosa's recordings of him. The Daily Beast reports that Trump takes particular issue with surreptitious recordings of himself, however, so for now it is just a wait and see.
